PHRASE-FINAL PITCH ACCOMMODATION EFFECTS IN DUTCH

A production experiment was carried out in order to establish the ways in which speakers of Dutch adjust the pitch contours of three frequently used nuclear contours, the Fall, the Rise, and the Fall-Rise, in phrase-final syllables with varying amounts of sonorant segmental material in the rime. It was found that the Fall and the Rise were somewhat compressed as well as somewhat truncated. The way the Fall-Rise was affected cannot properly be described in terms of either of these concepts, as its overall pitch range was reduced as sonorant portions were shorter. F0 range compression was thus applied to all three contour types, time compression only to the Fall and the Rise.